


Shifting Parameters

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Category: Dredd (2012)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, F/M, Psychic Abilities, Sexual Content, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:15:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27812152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: "Is there some kind of one-year anniversary assessment going on here? Because I'll happily tell you all about how hot you are-- butafterwe catch this next perp.  Because if I'm going to fail anyway, I'd rather go out on a high note."
Relationships: Cassandra Anderson/Joseph Dredd
Comments: 13
Kudos: 72
Collections: Heart Attack Exchange 2020





	Shifting Parameters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meilan_Firaga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/gifts).



> No content from the original comics, though I did check a few terms and look up the tie-ins that were created after the movie. The only thing I borrowed from there was Anderson's badge; the rest is all movie-verse. :)

"Anderson to Control; I'm on my way."

The wind tugged at the strands of Cassandra's hair escaping from beneath the rim of her helmet as she redirected her Lawmaster toward the 10-24 in progress. Past time to trim it again; either that, or give up on the style entirely and start putting up. She kept forgetting the issue when she wasn't wearing the helmet, and by the time she got home she was usually too tired to remember. But it would have to wait – again – until after the report of a Judge under fire was dealt with, and who knew how long that would take. This was Dredd they were talking about, after all.

She'd only been a few minutes away when she'd heard the report, on her way home after wrapping up her latest investigation. There was still a faint metallic taste in the air, and a hint of brown haze to the west; it seemed as if every time a dust storm blew in from the Cursed Earth, crime spiked even worse than usual in the sectors nearest the outer wall. It was no surprise another Judge had been caught up it. Just that the Judge in question happened to be her assessing officer.

Not that she thought he was invincible, the way some of the other younger Judges did; a little hard to believe that about a man when her fingers had been covered in his blood and his in hers. But because their paths had so rarely crossed on the job since she'd passed her assessment. They were assigned to different sectors; Mega-City One wasn't exactly a small place; and Psi Division usually pointed her at specific crimes her unique skills would better enable her to solve, rather than leaving her to pick up calls on her own like any other street Judge.

She'd heard his voice several times over the comms, though. Felt the distinct presence of his mind passing by in the Hall of Justice: no one else she'd ever met radiated quite that steely mix of anger and control. Run into him at the occasional meeting, mandatory briefing, or multi-division operation. And after that first call, Cassandra never fully trusted any Judge until she knew their opinion of Dredd. A criminal in her area with enough juice to have _him_ at bay was obviously someone she should have been onto a long damn time ago, anyway.

"Copy, Anderson. Details to follow." 

The dash display lit up with the available information as she took a sharp corner; a video clip punctuated with bright bursts and flying shrapnel made her wince, and she reluctantly resigned herself to leaving on the helmet when she arrived. She hadn't liked wearing it when she'd started her career as a Judge, and she liked it even less these days, even when legally required to do so on the bike; the rad-shedding liner built into helmet and armor both muffled her abilities too much for comfort, like a pair of sound-baffling earplugs for the mind. But it wouldn't do her any good at all if she caught a bullet because she didn't like the _feeling_ of it.

Never mind what Dredd would say. Her mouth quirked in a wry smile, and she gunned the engine, swerving around a large, boxy truck marked with the logo of a down-market vat-protein supplier. Traffic near the wall was low as always, but the roads were narrower, and there weren't any Justice-only lanes that far out.

A lot like the sector where she'd grown up, in fact. Judges were as rare as domestic animals there – and about as well-regarded even by the average citizens. Cassandra kept a sharp eye out as she drew closer to her destination, sweeping ahead with her psychic gifts as well as she could through the helmet, and felt a spike of murderous intent wash over her about a second and a half before a plume of flame ignited on the balcony of a building just ahead and to the right. It was an older apartment building, crumbling around the edges and dwarfed by the shadow of the nearest Mega Block, only a few streets from Dredd's reported location. Probably even odds it was a lookout for that gang, or a random Judge-hating criminal pot-shotting at reinforcements.

She accelerated again in time to get out of the target zone – but not enough to save her from the backblast. The rocket-propelled grenade struck the street a few yards behind and to one side of her back tire; the shock wave lifted the Lawmaster clear of the street, flipping it forward as the reinforced rubber shredded violently apart. Cassandra shoved away from the bike automatically, pushing clear on the lee side of the explosion, and tucked into herself as she somersaulted wildly across the street.

She gasped in a breath as she came to rest on her back, doing a quick self-assessment. The Lawmaster had taken most of the shrapnel, but the edge of her jaw was stinging from contact with the asphalt, and she had no doubt she was going to come up black and blue under the armor. But she was still in one functional piece.

Same shit, different day, in other words. Cassandra shoved herself up off the ground before something worse could come her way, swept her Lawgiver from its holster, and took aim in the direction of the offending balcony. "Hot shot!" 

Someone gave a strangled shout behind a fluttering curtain three stories up as her heat-seeking round streaked through it; even with her gifts muffled, she could tell it was her attacker. The spike of malice that had first alerted her soured into pained fear, then extinguished – and as it faded, the emotional environment of the neighborhood cooled several degrees, as if everyone watching had mentally withdrawn several steps back. No backup on the attacker's side, then; at least, none willing to face the same summary Judgment.

"Shit," she sighed, reholstering her weapon as she glanced around the scene. The remaining traffic on the street had found other routes the minute her bike had been catapulted into the air; it was just her, the smoldering remains of the machine, and several pairs of eyes watching from the shadows now. She stalked over to the ruined Lawmaster, filled her pockets with backup mags from the saddlebags, then called in the wreck and set the limited AI in the still-intact dashboard comp on automatic. If anyone tried to hack or steal it, it would finish self-destructing; otherwise, the next backup to arrive would salvage what they could. In a closed system like Mega-City One, every scrap of reusable metal and circuitry was worth retrieving.

In the meantime, there was still a Judge in need of the same service. And the building where Dredd had reported taking fire was less than a quarter-mile away on foot. 

Cassandra left her helmet on as she jogged in his direction, sticking close to the shadows at the foot of the buildings. Dirty blankets and propped-up cardboard signs announced where vagrants had recently been, but were no longer; she didn't have to warn anyone with a three-week sentence in the iso-cubes this time. Nor was any of the other usual foot traffic around. Between the grenade in the street and the echoing bursts of gunfire from up ahead, though, it wasn't hard to figure out why.

She slowed as she approached the last corner between herself and the GPS dot pulsing on her wristcomp, and leaned forward for a quick glimpse before announcing her arrival to all and sundry. Another aging, multi-story structure squatted at the address Dredd had called from, this one a decaying office building rather than a residential warren. The walls were yellowing concrete, the color of smoke-stained teeth, and the reinforced-glass windows were all evenly-cut, evenly-spaced squares, like cells in some kind of soulless corporate hive. Several panes had been broken in one corner, their remains shattered and smoking; on the street in front of that edge of the building, a big armored truck had been overturned, one of the transport trucks that went out beyond the wall. Several men in worn clothing, scarves wrapped around their necks and goggles shielding their eyes, lurked behind it. As she watched, one of them leaned up over the back of the truck to fire another burst of shots into the building.

More kibitzers? Or Dredd's original attackers? Cassandra frowned, then pulled back around the corner and lifted off her helmet, brow furrowing as she focused on their presence. The world blurred slightly around her, overlaid with the input of another sense most people didn't have access to: the small despairs and joys and frustrations that made up daily life in Mega-City One like a background hum everywhere, interrupted by bright/hot eruptions of energy where more active emotions disrupted the ambient. In the building, several loud/sharp flares of intensity had been blurred into an undifferentiated grouping by the distance, but the hostiles behind the truck stood out loud and clear as individuals. Dredd was on all their minds: the personification of the Law descended from on high to disrupt their gang boss' business. All of them had committed crimes worthy of a death sentence, easily detectable from even such a light skim.

Of course, psychic readings didn't qualify as proof; legally, they were a means of _locating_ proof for the Hall of Justice to use in rendering their verdicts. But she didn't think she'd need to go that far this time. Channeling Dredd – the way she always did when announcing an arrest like this; the Judge leading the Psi Division had accused her once of imprinting on the man, and it was a fairer point than she'd usually admit – she jammed her helmet back on her head and lifted her weapon, raising her voice.

"Citizens! This is the Law. Disperse immediately, or lethal force will be used to clear the area!"

Only one of the hostiles had been looking away from the building, a young man with long, lank hair tied back from his face with a scrap of grimy cloth, nervously scanning the street. He was the only one to correctly guess her location when the whole group of them spun around, firing wildly in her direction. Not that it did him any good: chips of concrete flew off the building next to her, several yards away, and no one else even came close.

"For attempting to murder a Judge, if you do not comply immediately, the sentence is death!" she warned them, then instructed her Lawgiver: "Rapid fire."

The pause between her announcement and when she stepped out from behind the building, walking her fire across the hostiles, was several seconds long: not enough for any of them to get away, but long enough that they could have surrendered if they valued their lives. None of them even tried to take the opportunity – though one, breathing erratically, fumbled his weapon and dropped it. Cassandra shifted her aim to tag the nervous idiot in the thigh, then advanced quickly, putting the rest down with swift precision. It was the work of a moment to kneel between the bodies and cuff the survivor, though she grimaced at the feeling of several more deaths permeating the air around her. Then she shook her head and lifted her comm to her mouth as more hostiles opened fire from the building's ground level.

"Anderson to Control; I've arrived outside Dredd's location. Four for resyk, and one wounded for the iso-cubes; several more hostiles in the building."

"Copy that. More backup is on the way," Control replied.

Cassandra blew out a breath and concentrated again. Within sight-distance, she didn't need the helmet off to count attackers, only for a more detailed read – and luckily, there were only two of them, tucked close together.

"High Ex," she decided, then leaned up over the truck and took the shot. Glass and concrete shattered outward from the building's entryway, then settled in a gritty, sparkling spray on the sidewalk.

"Two more for resyk," she told Control, then jogged swiftly through the shattered doors, debris crunching under the thick soles of her boots as she moved.

The first room inside was some kind of waiting area, laid out in a wide rectangle with worn couches, cheap repros of landscape scenes that didn't exist anymore on the walls, and a big, dark screen starred by impact damage hung behind a still-intact reception counter. Cassandra couldn't sense anyone else close enough to be an immediate threat, so she removed her helmet again as she passed the counter and dropped it there for later retrieval. In an indoor space, it was a lot harder for an attacker to approach her without coming within range of her gifts; still a risk, but a much more manageable one than when she'd been out in the open.

Above her, the knot of intensity she'd dimly sensed from outside came into greater clarity as she left the counter behind. There were maybe a dozen more men up there, mostly angry and defensive, plus a rigid beacon of fury and pain that had to be Dredd. They'd caught him off guard, maybe; he'd caught _them_ off guard, definitely. No one had expected whatever tidy enterprise had been carried on here – some kind of financial scam, from the report summary she'd glanced at – to turn into a crossfire.

The interior walls were a faded grey, the tiles worn, but the walls were clear of graffiti; it had definitely still been in use as a commercial space, not repurposed into housing or occupied by gangs or squatters. The resistance Dredd had run into had probably been organized, then, not opportunistic: funded by someone prosperous by a citizen's scale, not a gang lord like Ma Ma. Cassandra glanced quickly at her wrist-comp again, swiping a thumb to expand the brief report that had sent Dredd there in the first place, and grunted as the identity of the building's owner came up. Garland: a citizen under City contract who operated a fleet of salvage trucks to harvest old-world technology from the Cursed Earth. Suspected of fraudulent practices, though nothing had ever been proven; there was anecdotal evidence of items having been sold at low-value prices, but all subsequent records showed higher amounts in the auction history, the company's books, and the totals deducted from the buyers.

The discrepancies had been small in the beginning; easily deniable, or written off as a flipped digit or a misunderstanding since no proof remained in the system. But the amounts had increased over time. And finally, someone had grown angry enough to confront Garland himself, and ended up a 'homicide in commission of' reported to the Hall of Justice. Bad timing on Dredd's part, tracing Garland from his home in Sector 13 to this satellite office, intersecting with a crew hurrying back from a salvage party in the wake of a dust storm. But good timing on the part of the Hall of Justice, pushing the call his way: Garland's next auction was the following week, his warehouses near full, all items eligible for confiscation in the wake of a capital crime.

Cassandra sighed. The Judge who'd shot Dredd on that first mission in Peach Trees hadn't been lying: Mega-City One was a meat grinder, and half the time the Judges were the ones turning the handle. A year on the streets had been enough to prove him right about that much. But that knowledge hadn't been able to change the fact that she'd been right, too: in the midst of all those wolves, there were still good people just trying to get by. She couldn't fix the system on her own, but crime by crime, it _was_ possible to make a difference on a smaller scale, to ensure little girls like she had been could survive to grow up and make their own choices. And with the limited budget they were able to squeeze out of a government whose population was more than 90% unemployed, surviving on basic assistive income – well, the Hall of Justice did what it had to in order to serve as much of the population's needs as it could.

She glanced at the evac plan helpfully tacked to the wall near a door labelled Stairs; Dredd's initial call had mentioned a file room. Judging from the labels on the rooms, that meant the fifth floor. The stairwell would dump her out at the other end of the hall, so she'd have to be ready the minute she emerged from it.

Cassandra cautiously extended her awareness a little bit more, reaching out a mental hand to tap against the imaginary shoulder of the consciousness she knew was Dredd's. She couldn't exactly read him, and the distance was still too much to send anything more than a brief hint of _I'm here, I'm coming_ , but she thought a silent warning might be a little more helpful at this juncture than announcing herself over the comms if he was in a situation where a loud sound or distraction might betray him.

She knew it had worked by the brief ripple of surprise/relief that pulsed through the mental touch; then his presence contracted fiercely behind the usual wall of anger again, only harder now, like carbon collapsing into a diamond. She took a deep breath, then eased open the door to the stairwell and crept quietly upward with her Lawgiver at the ready.

Dredd must have been listening closely, because the minute she pushed the door open at the right floor to announce herself, a new spate of gunfire erupted, neatly distracting the waiting hostiles. There were only a few there; the rest must have been searching the rooms on that floor while they waited either for Dredd to try to shoot his way out or for his backup to arrive. And unlike the idiot outside, or the techie a year ago who'd been as much victim as perpetrator, none of them fumbled or hesitated as they returned fire, stitching the wall with a fresh spray of holes. Cassandra switched her Lawgiver back to Rapid Fire, swiftly passing sentence, then winced as the presences of their surviving companions grew sharper and angrier as if to fill up the space left behind.

Or – as if someone else had flared them into greater life, before they too faded away. More presences flickered out as Dredd's familiar aura stalked its way toward her, and she sighed in relief before extending herself out again to zero in on the last few. There weren't any surrenders among these, either. But then again, none of them were Garland – and Dredd would have been long gone if he'd found the man first. That would be a puzzle for a later time, though.

The last hostile fell, taken out by a shot that wasn't hers just as she finally tracked him down, and the tension that had filled Cassandra since she first heard his call for help finally began to relax as the tall form of the legendary Judge filled the doorway opposite.

"Dredd," she greeted him, scanning quickly for evidence of injuries as she lowered her weapon. "Responding to your 10-24."

"I noticed," he replied, voice a little wry as he lowered his Lawgiver in turn. "Good to see you again, Anderson."

He was moving a little stiffly, and there were fresh bullet scars on his armor – he was probably carrying as many new bruises as she was. But she couldn't see any bloodstains, or puncture points from a through-and-through.

"Good to be seen," she replied, breaking out in an almost involuntary grin. Maybe she really had imprinted on the man; she was a capable and effective Judge now in her own right, but she felt so much _warmer_ every time she stood this close to him, it was ridiculous. She hastily cleared her throat, then gestured to the office around them. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Negative," he replied, mouth twisting grimly. "I was headed for the safe room on the sixth floor when Garland's crew caught up with me."

"Safe room?" Cassandra repeated, visualizing the plaque by the stairwell again. She hadn't seen anything like that on the simplified floor map – but then again, she wouldn't, would she? But there had been an interior room marked with only one entry, isolated both from the hallways and the exterior walls. And nothing directly above it on the seventh: just an unmarked square too small to be a room. A likely place for an escape hatch up to the roof. "The one listed as a utility room?"

Dredd nodded once, sharply. "Garland was last seen approaching this address. Even if he didn't come here, there may also be evidence in secure storage; this is where the goods from the trucks are first inventoried."

That could mean original valuation records. Which seemed like a pretty good guess, given how violently Garland's thugs had defended the place. "I don't sense anyone else up there, but it's probably best to be sure," she said, frowning as she refocused. "If there's shielding in the walls, I might not be able to pick up on his presence."

His head tilted slightly as he took her in again, scanning her the way she had him. His visor seemed to linger on the sweaty fringe of her hair, swinging below the angle of her jaw, and for a moment she thought she saw appreciation in the lines of his expression; though of course, she was probably imagining things. The tenor of his mental presence hadn't changed at all. "Still no helmet," he noted.

He said that like it was somehow a surprise. "Oh, I did until I got here," she replied with a shrug. "When it was useful. But you know I'm more useful in situations like this one without it."

His grunt of disagreement didn't catch her off guard, but the finger he lifted to tap against her badge did. For all that they _had_ seen each other in passing several times, it hadn't ever been just the two of them; the contact felt a lot more intimate than it probably should. "Not a surprise you'd think that, considering," he said, a strange note underlying the gruffness. "But don't forget, the abilities are just a tool. From what I've heard, you'd be plenty effective even without them."

Cassandra glanced down at the word written across her chest. Was that concern in his voice? But why? He'd passed her, after all. She'd torn her rookie badge off the day of her assessment and handed it to Dredd, convinced she'd failed; the next morning, when she'd gone to file the relevant paperwork, a new one had been waiting. But it had read PSI, not ANDERSON. The revelation of exactly what the Chief Judge had intended her for, and why the Psi Division Judges tended not to advertise their names, had been as much a surprise to her as the fact that Dredd had approved her. She'd wondered why for a long time, before deciding it didn't really matter; what mattered was that she had become a Judge after all.

Now that he was in front of her again, though, without anyone else to overhear, she couldn't exactly let the moment pass without saying _something_. 

"That wasn't exactly a normal assessment, was it?" Cassandra asked, tilting her head at him. "Even before we ran into Ma Ma."

Dredd's mouth curved in a half-smile. "Oh, we'd have run into _something_. And I'd have failed you if you'd made any mis-Judgments. But no, the procedures weren't the focus of your assessment. No psychic as powerful as you would ever fail a test you truly wanted to pass. Yet despite your results, you genuinely wanted to be a Judge. That smacked of self-sabotage."

"And the Chief Judge needed to know if I could get past that in the field," Cassandra finished for him. The conflicts between what she knew, what she wanted, and what she _felt_ had taken a sharp confrontation with reality to put into perspective, and some days the onslaught of negativity she waded through daily in that uniform still threatened to take her knees out from under her. But she had proven she could live with that; what she couldn't live with was doing _nothing_. "But why you? Why not a Psi Division Judge?"

"Why not hand the Psi Division the greatest potential asset they'd ever seen," he replied, voice as dry as the dust-laden wind, "and then ask them if they were really sure that serving the city was in the asset's best interest? That's a tough one."

She didn't like thinking of herself as just an asset. Luckily, it seemed the Chief Judge – and Dredd – thought the same. "Fair enough," she said, surprising herself with a laugh. "Shall we?"

It hadn't escaped her notice that he hadn't answered the other half of her question – but then, he hadn't really had to, had he. Judge Dredd was known across Mega-City One as a man who lived and breathed his duty. If the average citizen knew the name of _any_ Judge, the odds were it was his. He might be only human, but his reputation spoke for him, and the Chief Judge trusted him. And, it just now occurred to her, he was _also_ known to never take his helmet off when he was working, either. She could barely reach the most surface level of his thoughts through it; how many other Psi-rated Judges could even do that much?

If Cassandra _hadn't_ passed, she wouldn't be surprised if Psi Division's up-and-coming 'greatest asset' would have become one of the twenty percent of rookies who never survived their first day. She wondered just how many borderline recruits had been trusted to his oversight for their assessments, and how many had proven themselves an unacceptable danger. Was it strange that she found that a comforting thought?

Dredd nodded at her, then lifted his Lawgiver again and gestured toward the door behind her. She nodded, then turned to follow him as he strode past, leading the way back into the hall toward the stairwell. There were elevators closer to their position, but in conditions like these, the stairs were definitely a safer bet. He updated Control again as they moved – then cut himself off as the sounds of heavy gunfire erupted again from outside.

"Backup is reporting heavy resistance," Control reported back, unnecessarily.

"Copy that," Dredd replied, then turned his helmet toward her in unmistakable question.

"Better hurry, then," she acknowledged with a shrug.

He nodded once, then pulled open the door to the staircase and headed up.

The sixth floor proved to be as empty of life as it had felt from below; there wasn't even any artwork on the walls. The entire space seemed to be almost subdued, as if it was holding its breath somehow, trying to avoid notice. Security in obscurity. The door to the safe room was more of the same, hidden by the old-school trick of a shelving unit on hinges.

Behind the bookcase, an advanced security system with a palm lock and fused access ports denied them entrance. But however armored the door and walls were, they were unlikely to stand up to an explosive entry – and if it _had_ been designed as a safe room, it was unlikely to have an automatic self-incineration system in the event of a breach. Even if it did, though, they'd be no worse off than they were already. One way or another, _this_ citizen's particular breach of the Law was likely to go unrepeated.

She could live with that. "Bust our way in?" she asked Dredd, reaching for her uniform pouches.

He nodded to her, turning back to stand guard as she reached to set the door-breaching charges in place. A memory flipped back up in her awareness of the last time they'd done this: the contrast between her rabbiting heart back then outside the Slo-Mo distribution center as he'd told her she didn't _look_ ready, and his confident strength at her back as she took charge today. It reminded Cassandra of how far she'd come – and made her even gladder that she'd taken this call. It was nice to re-measure herself against him in the field and not find herself wanting.

She couldn't help but wonder if he thought the same. If behind the shield of his helmet, Dredd had been watching her as much as she'd been watching him in all those fleeting, casual encounters over the last several months.

She shook the distraction away, then darted out of range of the backblast, gesturing him back as the charges counted down. The hallway filled with smoke and a roar of noise; she was up and moving again almost on Dredd's heels as the solid _thunk_ of the security door collapsing confirmed their success.

A wall of filing cabinets, stained with smoke and bright scratch-marks where shrapnel had scored them, and a bank of computer components waited inside. One wall held a bank of security displays, filled with images of the firefight in the street in front of the building, several of them showing hairline fractures from the explosion. And against the opposite wall, a cowering human form knelt behind an overturned sleeping berth, mind popping up like a frightened rabbit in her awareness.

She frowned at the man, covering Dredd as he pulled a set of cuffs from his own belt and began reading off Garland's rather lengthy list of crimes, then glanced over at the monitors. The gunfire was dying down outside as another pair of Judges advanced on a second transport truck; several more of Garland's thugs were already spread all over the asphalt. It still seemed almost like overkill for what they'd found there. It would be interesting to see what the Tek Division got out of the man's files.

"Anderson to Control," she reported, lifting her comm again. "Garland has been captured; the interior of the building is secure."

"Meat wagon inbound," Control confirmed, and she turned back, frowning deepening as she studied the now-secured perp.

Something was bothering her about the whole situation. The small-scale war outside was at odds with the easy way they'd captured him, and the age of the building was distinctly at variance with the presence of a shielded room. Reinforced walls weren't anything new, but ones a Psi Judge couldn't sense anything through? Her job would be infinitely more difficult if more criminals had adopted that technology. What exactly had he been concealing? Himself – or something else?

"Picking up on something?" Dredd asked, jerking Garland to his feet. 

"I'm not sure," she said, glancing one more time around the room. Nothing really stood out; just the sleeping area, the wall of filing cabinets, the computer equipment, and....

Something spiked, sharp and alarmed, in Garland's thoughts as her gaze passed over the cabinets, and she hummed in annoyance. "Need to check," she said, narrowing her gaze – and then went _in_.

Every mind Cassandra entered was unique; every internal world was built from the individual memories, fears, and desires of the person she reached, and no two human beings lived identical lives. But there were a lot of similarities. The backdrop of someone's interior world was usually much like the actual world around them, and their internal avatars usually looked much like themselves. People were rarely detached enough from reality to imagine anything different solidly enough to anchor it in place. Their interactions with her were usually angry, fearful, violent, or sexually threatening in nature, and often all of the above; again, usually a reflection of their outer world. Garland was no different: though the distorted vision of the bank of filing cabinets, multiplied several times their original size in his thoughts, made it even easier than usual to guess what he was concealing.

She blinked, then glanced again toward the cabinets. "He keeps the best of his gleanings here, too," she realized. "Things he doesn't report to the Hall of Justice, or sell at public auction. Private collectors only."

"Of course he does. Let's see these treasures," Dredd replied, patting down Garland's pockets for his keys. He dumped the man like a pile of dirty laundry on the floor, then flipped through the ring until he found the one that looked like it fit the lock on the leftmost file cabinet.

The entire row unlocked as one, all false fronts moving together like a single vast, retractable door. It was heavy enough that Dredd visibly strained to shift it up and out of the way, no doubt lined with lead like the safe room's walls. Inside, a row of dark metal shelving was stacked with a variety of exotic items, all of them ancient, striking, or dangerous in some obvious way. A couple, equipped with cryo tech, displayed bio-hazard symbols. But in the center, a dull green container took pride of place, marked with an instantly recognizable tri-foil.

That meant nuclear. _Definitely_ something the Hall of Justice would prefer out of private hands. "Well, shit."

"Looks like I'm going to be busy," Dredd replied, tone very dry.

He was right: tracing the buyers of those items – and any similar items that had passed through Garland's hands – would be at least as important as taking down Garland himself. The city was drowning in enough corruption without adding illegal old-world poisons to the pot. Still, he was making a rather large assumption there.

" _You're_ going to be busy?" Cassandra repeated, raising her eyebrows at him.

His posture was almost affronted as he turned his helmet toward her. At least, that was how she interpreted it. Trying to figure him out had been a real education in body language over the last year, something she'd seldom needed to know before; even when she wasn't diving deep, most people she met might as well have been wearing their emotions in mood ring colors on the surface of their skin. It was kind of refreshing to have to exercise the other parts of her mind for once, even if it was also frustrating. He might actually have a point about her gifts being only one tool of many. Not that she'd tell him that.

"You're in my sector, I'm between investigations, and I'm already here," she clarified. "I think the operative term here is _we_."

His only response was a grunt, but the line of his shoulders seemed much more approving. "One more for the iso cubes," he told Control, aiming the vid pickup of his wristcomp toward the cabinet safe. "And additional high-value contraband for pickup."

"Acknowledged, Dredd. Backup reports building exterior now secure. Patrol wagon inbound."

"Copy that," he replied, then glanced at her, something considering in the line of his mouth. Then he nodded to himself. "Continuing investigation with Judge Anderson."

She grinned at him over Control's affirmative response, then holstered her Lawgiver and reached down to pull Garland back to his feet. "Let's get him downstairs then, while we wait for the Tek team. I might be able to get a few names for them to start with when they crack the files."

He nodded sharply again, then stepped back through the wrecked door, Lawgiver at the ready.

* * *

The next few hours were a waiting game: waiting for the meat wagons to arrive, waiting for the medics, waiting for the Tek Judges, dotting the i's and crossing the t's of their electronic paperwork. Somewhere in the midst of all that, she let Control know about her wrecked Lawmaster; the Tek Judges sent someone to collect it and brought her a backup. And she did a second, deeper dive on Garland, parked on a couch in the remains of the building's reception room with Dredd standing over them to watch her back.

Touch had always amplified her abilities; however her psychic gifts actually worked, they utilized the human body's nervous system. Sparks traveling from one cell to the next, carrying messages to and from the brain. Immediate contact formed a clearer connection than transmission through the air, just like hardwired computer hookups could be more powerful than a weak or distant wireless connection, and could be blocked or shielded against in similar ways. Seated on the couch beside Garland, bared hands framing his face, there was no resistance: his thoughts were like an open book.

Unfortunately, he had never dealt with the buyers in person. All sales had been anonymized over a black-market network. The only thing Garland _did_ know was the exchange point sequence: the various drops where objects and credits had been left and retrieved, and the order in which they were usually visited. It wasn't much, but at least it was a place to start. She dictated them all to Dredd as she read them out of his mind, then called another Judge in to take the perp away.

That left just the two of them temporarily alone again in the wrecked lobby. Cassandra's stomach grumbled as Dredd finished feeding the list of coordinates into his wristcomp, frowning at the tracemap it generated. None of the glowing dots that came up were exactly close to Garland's secret HQ; they were spread through several sectors, not clustered particularly closely to either that building or the main offices Dredd had tracked him from. Which made sense, if they'd been set up by a larger network Garland had happened to tap into, though it made them harder to intercept; they might have to bring other Judges into the investigation. She did recognize one particular street grid, though: it was in the same neighborhood as her apartment, maybe a few hundred yards from the cheap food cart she often stopped at on her way home. It was even on that week's schedule; if someone had planned to make a pickup there, they'd arrive in about three hours.

"Here first?" she suggested, tapping the dot in question. "Scout it out, then get food just down the street and stake out the location while we eat. We won't look out of place there; I'm not the only Judge living in the area."

That probably had something to do with why the criminal network had picked it; the type of citizen who could afford to purchase items from that particular black market would both appreciate the lowered odds of a pettier thief raiding their drop, and get a rise out of parading their own crimes right under the Judges' noses.

"Any buyers still waiting on delivery might be aware of Garland's arrest," Dredd pointed out.

Cassandra tilted her head at him, wondering if he was actually suggesting what she thought he was. Dredd _was_ known for always wearing the helmet, but he had to have done undercover work at some point, and this wasn't an assessment. Being known only as the face of the Law would make him even less recognizable without its symbols than even a Judge whose badge didn't bear her name. 

"My apartment's near there. We could shed the leathers, conceal our weapons until I sense someone coming," she suggested.

A muscle jumped in Dredd's jaw, though the set of his mouth looked amused. "At a food cart."

Or maybe it was an assessment? What kind, though, would be the question. Cassandra shrugged at him, smiling back. "I never said _at_ the food cart. There's plenty of places to sit down or conceal ourselves nearby. Though the appearance of a date _would_ be an effective cover."

"But just the leathers? Not the helmet?" he evaded by way of reply, the corners of his mouth turning up just a little bit more. His mental tone had lightened a little, though she still got mostly a fiery, controlled wall when she extended her senses; had someone trained him to do that? Everything about him still fascinated her.

Cassandra could feel her cheeks warming, though whether in embarrassment at her own thoughts or at the dry way his comments balanced on the line between clarification and flirtation, she couldn't be sure. Maybe that first exchange of greetings _had_ been appreciative after all; the prospect made her heart beat just that little bit faster, and tempted her to be freer with her own reply. "You mean you don't have a different one for your off hours? I thought it might be like in that old Space Bounty Hunter show, you know the one."

He huffed an almost-laugh at that, then picked her helmet up off the reception counter and held it out to her. "Address?"

She rolled her eyes, then took it from him, settling it over her head as she gave the location of her apartment. "No roommates. One nosy neighbor, though she's usually glued to her vids this time of day."

"Thirty minutes," Dredd grunted by way of reply, then nodded at her and strode out of the building.

"Thirty minutes," Cassandra laughed to herself, then headed to her own Lawmaster and aimed for home.

Fortunately, her apartment wasn't large, and she generally kept it picked up; hard not to develop that habit, growing up first in the City's care and then in the trainees' barracks. She sped home, then threw herself out of her uniform, tucking it away in the closet and stepping into a comfortable pair of trousers and a bright, cheerful blouse with a daring neckline that had been hanging behind all her plain black tee shirts for months. She'd bought it back when she'd thought she might have time for a social life now that she was out of training; an undercover 'date' made the perfect excuse to finally bring it out, even if Dredd didn't appreciate the results.

Finally, she hastily put away the few items left out: the mug left on the kitchen counter from that morning, the throw blanket disarrayed on the couch, the towel that had missed the laundry basket. She had just finished applying a layer of lip gloss and making sure her hair looked artfully disarrayed rather than windblown when a knock sounded at her door, the familiar intense presence behind it confirming the identity of her visitor.

"Dredd," she greeted him, throwing open the door – then gave him a wry, crooked smile, not sure whether she was disappointed. The other Judge hadn't changed, still wearing his slightly dusty, bullet-marred, armored leathers, the black and gold and red of the helmet shielding his face.

"Not bad," he said, tipping his chin at her.

Pleasure brought a flush to her cheeks; the disappointment made her cheeky again. "I'd say the same, but.... Well, I'll just say the same," she teased, stepping back out of the way. "Planning to play decoy?"

Dredd shook his head, just once, though she felt that lighter wave of emotion shimmer over the surface of his mind again. Then he reached up – and the helmet came _off_ , revealing amused hazel eyes and a shock of short dark hair about as disarrayed as hers. "Thought I'd leave it here. Easier to retrieve it after."

"Oh – oh!" she said nonsensically, stepping back out of the way as he came in. "Of course."

The jacket came off next, revealing a black tee shirt as plain as the ones she wore under her uniform ... though it might as well have been designer wear, the way it clung to his muscular form.

"No wonder you never take it off," she blurted, breath catching at the view. She'd seen so little skin in all their acquaintance that even just taking the helmet off might as well have been stripping naked; the fact that he actually looked the way he did was just the icing on the diet-breaking dessert.

"That bad, huh," Dredd said, lifting an eyebrow at her. An _eyebrow_. Because he had them: dark arches above an otherwise nicely-shaped nose marred at the bridge by an old break, and a five o'clock shadow spreading up from that familiar firm chin. The belt and gloves had followed the jacket onto her couch; without them, the trousers could almost pass as something normal, and the boots as pop-style reproductions.

It almost didn't seem real. After a year of watching from a distance, now this? Cassandra bit her lip, trying to calm the effervescent fizz of hormones in her bloodstream. "Is there some kind of one-year anniversary assessment going on here? Because I'll happily tell you all about how hot you are – but _after_ we catch this next perp. Because if I'm going to fail anyway, I'd rather go out on a high note."

Bizarrely enough, his mood lightened even more at that, clearer and more obvious now without either helmet in the way. "If there was, it'd be personal, not Judicial," he said, then ran his fingers through his hair, retucked his shirt, and walked into the kitchen to dampen a towel and rub it over his face. "Law comes first."

"Law comes first?" she repeated, still lagging behind the curve the way she never did with anyone else. Then she swallowed hard as the implications finally set in, calming the wave of giddy surprise.

Seeping out from behind that wall of control, unshielded now in the privacy of her apartment, a series of interconnected scenes/images flowed from Dredd's mind to Cassandra's. The day-to-day, solitary focus of a life dedicated wholly to the law. The occasional connection, soured when the one approached – or approaching – inevitably wanted something more from him than to always put his duty first. A surprised resonance, like the shivering of a struck bell, when Cassandra had told him of her reasons for wanting to be a Judge. An abiding curiosity whether that idealism would last ... and over the course of the following months, whether she might prove compatible in other ways, as well.

 _Admirable_.

Dredd didn't actually expect anything – but circumstance had delivered this opportunity after a year of ships passing in the night. And hell, he was something of a masochist anyway, or he'd never have survived this long. Might as well make the overture while there was a chance.

"Existentially, not chronologically, I hope," Cassandra managed to add, something in her now trembling in unexpected resonance. She hadn't actually expected anything either – but she _wanted_. And she'd spent the last year learning how to be confident in her own choices and desires.

She crossed the room slowly, watching his gaze drop to her mouth, then her exposed breastbone, then return to fix on her eyes again as she approached. The urge to rise up on her toes and fit her lips to his without further ado broke over her like a wave; but this was _Dredd_ , not a citizen she'd never see again. She paused half an arm-length away, then lifted one hand between them, cupped as though beckoning him closer.

A brief furrow came and went between his brows. Then she got the distinct, projected sensation of his mouth going as dry as hers as he understood.

Dredd's hand rose to join hers, clasping gently between them, two lifetimes' worth of gun calluses rasping against one another's palms. And then Cassandra pressed her mind – finally, firmly – against his. Not just the fringes of his radiating emotions: the whole of him, entire.

For a moment, a wildfire seemed to burn between them, lighting up her nerve endings with phantom burns. It was like nothing she'd ever encountered before. But then she was through, standing on the inside of that familiar wall of anger and control. It burned like a steady backfire, set and fed in a moat around what it was meant to protect: a leaping wall of gold and red and shadowy black, almost mesmerizing in its dance.

"Cassandra," a voice said almost in her ear, echoing strangely in her inner landscape. Her mental representation startled at the sound, before the speaker's identity registered: Dredd, of course, but somehow smoother, less roughened by a life spent in a hostile job in an often even more hostile environment. She turned to face his avatar with a rueful expression, and found her hand still tucked close in his.

He was smooth-faced here as well, a little younger; and though whether it was the lack of the experience that age and wear implied, or some aspect of his own self-image, he seemed in some unquantifiable way plainer. Cassandra had no doubt her own face was similarly just that little bit off from reality from his perspective, though whatever the differences, they didn't dim the intrigue in his expression at all.

"I've been sensing other people's emotions my whole life, you know," she began, deciding to go for the bluntest approach. She thought he'd appreciate that best. "Including arousal. I learned early on that it doesn't really mean anything. Any more than kind words, when someone's really thinking 'freak'. Or when they say 'I love you', but what they really mean is 'you're mine.' It makes it hard to trust anyone enough to connect. But human beings are tribal; most of us are hardwired to seek those connections."

Around her, as she spoke, images flickered like holoscreens projected against the wall of flames. Kay from Peach Trees, and his idea of flirtation. A classmate, lips twisted in exaggerated disgust. A pair of neighbors in her last apartment building, one's hand leaving a ring of bruises on the other's arm. But they settled into stillness again as she ran her thumb over the back of the hand clasped in hers.

"There's something to be said for knowing exactly where you stand," she added huskily, then lifted their joined hands, eyes still locked on his, and pressed her lips against the back of Dredd's fingers.

A shudder ran through him; then he lifted his other palm to her cheek and leaned down to capture her mouth in a firm kiss. 

There barely seemed any difference between their heights in here; it was all comfort and sensation and a flashfire tide of lust, as though they'd breathed in the flames around them to burn within as well. It could have lasted forever, or no time at all; Cassandra had rarely tried actually _connecting_ with someone this way before, tangling their thoughts and surface-level emotions though dual touch until it was hard to tell which of them was which. If they hadn't had a deadline, if they hadn't _just_ got through affirming duty and individual autonomy....

But no, she reminded herself; she _had_ tried it before, ignorant of the consequences. There was a reason, as Dredd had hinted, that she'd been conflicted enough about her goals and her abilities to ride the line of failure all the way up to her Rookie Assessment. Cassandra smiled against Dredd's imaginary mouth, then pulled slowly back, reintegrating her separate self and waiting for him to do so as well.

His eyes burned still, in the light of the reflected flames; but she couldn't mistake the reluctant approval there too, flickering though the heat around them. "Raincheck for later, then," he said, voice raspier.

She laughed, then took a mental step back--

\--and found herself again in the living room of her apartment, cool hand clasped in Dredd's. "Raincheck for later," she agreed, staring up at him. Then she finally let go, turning away to pick up the spare comm she kept on the table by the door and tucked it under the cuff of her sleeve.

"Unbelievable," he said wryly, shaking his head. Then he tucked his Lawgiver away into a pocket, temporarily concealed, and handed her the purse she'd chosen to hide hers.

They linked arms as they exited her apartment, easily, without discussing it; the nosy neighbor she'd mentioned to him earlier, Mrs. Hicks, gave Cassandra a wide-eyed look and a thumb-up as they passed her window. No one else seemed to pay them any attention at all, not even as much as she got when she walked back from a shift carrying her dinner; she'd been worried the fact that she often left her helmet off might count against her, but standing next to Dredd, it was as though she'd melted into an indistinguishable figure on the fringes of everyone else's lives. That probably shouldn't have been comforting, either, but pressed up against the bulwark of Dredd's presence, she hardly needed any extra recognition.

There was a table free near the food cart, a dingy wobble-legged affair two color patterns behind the current trend, but it had a pair of chairs and a clear view of the drop site. Cassandra pushed Dredd at one of the seats, then sauntered toward the cart, promising to order for him. Most of that was for show, but she did extend a tendril of attention to him again as she walked away, carefully brushing up against his thoughts. 

The shield of anger was still there, though less intense without the helmet, but she got the distinct impression of it softening at her touch this time. _Any allergies?_ she projected, carefully.

He couldn't quite send words back in return, but she got a distinct negative impression back; he'd definitely heard her. She asked for a second plate of her usual order, marveling at the surreality of her evening. Dredd without his helmet, sharing dinner with her! But then again, she couldn't imagine it happening any other way: on the job, putting duty first. Just with an extra frisson underlaying everything.

The sun was low on the horizon by the time she paid for the plates and walked back, the breeze starting to kick up again around the vast spires of the Mega Blocks. The haze left behind by the dust storm was mostly gone, but enough was still in the air to turn the entire western sky to molten gold above the horizon line of the wall, painting the concrete jungle around them in long stripes of sunset colors. On the cliff of James Lovell block, towering in the near distance, the flickering image of a chariot above the crescent curve of the Moon served as a signpost for the direction anyone approaching the cache would likely come.

Dredd kicked the second chair into position opposite his as she dropped the flimsy paper plates on the table, and she took the hint with a smile, watching over his shoulder as she watched over his. They took their time eating, trading quiet observations about the crowd, half out-loud, and half traded in wordless mental nudges; it was so easy, easier even than Cassandra had been expecting, to skim her ankle over the calf of his boot on one level, flip an image of a man walking by with a suspicious bulge at his waist between their minds, and savor the taste of the next bite of fried food, all at the same time. As with every time they worked together, he seemed to add to her focus, not distract from it, and if she didn't know it would be the quickest way to drive him away again, she might have asked the Chief Judge to consider officially pairing them more often.

The shadows lengthened as they lingered over the last bites and a pair of cheap dispenser drinks – then paid off, as Dredd's lazy watchful attention suddenly sharpened into an exclamation point. "Cheap suit. Someone's assistant," he said, reaching down to ease his Lawgiver out of his pocket and into his lap.

Cassandra drew hers as well, murmuring "Stun" under her breath, and lanced her awareness outward. Amid the sea of tired, hungry, and pettily frustrated minds seething around them, one focused consciousness moved like a man on a mission, an almost perfunctory level of wariness layered over impatience and determination. The risk had paid off; the latest purchaser _hadn't_ got the message that Garland's arm of the network had been rolled up and that his package wouldn't be waiting for him.

Dredd got casually to his feet, tucking his weapon under his empty, greasy plate, and ambled slowly in the same direction of the overflowing, graffiti'ed trashcans. The courier was headed roughly the same way, paying no attention to the food cart's patrons. Cassandra covered a yawn with her drink as they both passed her, casually eyeing the man's face; she didn't recognize him, but she captured his face with the vid pickup on her comm, then stood to follow them.

Traffic was picking up as the last of the light faded from the sky and the neon lights of the nighttime city took over for the sun; that made it easy to hang back just barely within view of Dredd as Dredd did the same behind their target. The drop was in a wall of rundown sleep-cubes, tiny rentable cells just bigger than a coffin, with cheap electronic locks and just enough storage room tucked alongside the narrow mattress for a change of clothes or a purse-sized stash of goods. The auto-manager's scanner eye was dark, and the bottom-most cube on the side farthest from it was shielded on one side by the wall of the nearest building and partially from the front by the high curb separating the pedway from the street. Even if any of the other vid-eyes on the street _were_ working, they'd miss that spot.

She saw Dredd cross in front of the drop cube, but didn't hear any raised voices; a moment later, she looked down, letting her fringe fall in front of her face as the courier came striding back the other way, considerably more frustrated and nervous than he'd been before. The cash-stick he'd had to insert to open the cube, and the man who'd given it to him, loomed larger in his thoughts than any hint of the item he'd been there to pick up, but the Tek Judges would undoubtedly get that out of the records. Cassandra took another recording with her comm, then hastened her steps again, catching back up to Dredd and slipping her arm back within his as if that had been her goal all along.

"No obvious crimes?" she murmured, lightly.

"More's the pity," he grumbled back, then tapped at his own comm, flipping a couple of images over to add to the file.

"Guy at his level, I'm sure there'll be _something_ they can drag him in for that won't raise red flags," she commented commiseratingly, patting at his arm. "Call in the other drop points? I'll get a wagon sent to his address; should be able to snag a few more threads before they catch on."

He grunted, then raised his comm again, subvocalizing over his own reporting channel.

Content with the evening's progress, and full of anticipation for both the public and private investigations opening up ahead of her, she did the same, guiding them along an ambling path back to her apartment as they continued to walk arm-in-arm.

They finished up around the same time, within sight of her door, and slowed to a thoughtful halt. Their Lawmasters were parked in the garage beneath the building, out of sight; if he was going back to his own apartment or the Hall of Justice that evening, they'd need to part there. On the other hand ... he _had_ left his jacket and helmet inside the apartment.

"Still on shift? Or do you have time for a sleep cycle?" she asked, smiling up at him tentatively. "I'm off now until dawn; then I'll be meeting with the Tek Judges to go over what we've found so far."

"Same," he replied, "though I'll be on one of the street teams. Eight hours."

"Eight hours," she agreed, then reached to tangle one of his hands with hers again. "No commitments?"

He heard the dual nature of her answer for what it was, a slow smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and let her pull him back toward the apartment. "Would be a shame to waste the opportunity."

"Uh-huh," she agreed, biting her lip, then keyed open the door and pulled him hastily inside.

They were barely behind closed doors when he stripped off his comm, tossing it toward the pile of jacket and helmet he'd left behind. Off duty: all _hers_ , at least until he put it on again in the morning. She followed suit, then stepped back long enough to undo the fasteners of her blouse as he walked her backward toward the couch. Dredd caught at the hem with his fingers, pulling it impatiently up over her head; she laughed as it hit the floor and pushed him away just long enough to return the favor, then collapsed backward onto the cushions, framing his waist with her hands as he slotted his still-half-clad body in between her legs.

They kissed again for a long, exploratory moment, passing incandescent heat back and forth between their minds; then she came up for air and caught the shine of the window, reflecting the interior lights back, out of the corner of her eye. "Hey, hey; drapes, or we'll have to send ourselves to the iso-cubes," she laughed.

He smirked again as he pulled back, all raw masculine appeal; but when he returned from hitting the switch to close them, his expression had fallen into more serious lines. "I wouldn't, you know," he said.

Cassandra almost asked _wouldn't what?_ , busy kicking off her trousers and planning her line of assault on his; but the cooling of the fire in his mind clued her in before she could say something stupid, and she snorted instead. "Anyone who would expect you to, doesn't know you. No compromise. No fraternization incompatible with duty. And no exclusive contracts. That's the Law."

"That's the Law," he repeated, then softened again – well, mentally at least; the bulge framed by the vee of his thighs clearly had other ideas.

She sat up far enough to get a grip on his belt loops, then pulled him back toward her, fingers working busily. He groaned, dry-thrusting against her hand, then buried his face in her hair and took a long, deep breath.

The combination of sensory inputs short-circuited something in her mind, and suddenly she had two sets of sensations to deal with: thrusting down and arching up; warm scents; electric pleasure radiating from every place they touched. It made her clumsy as she fumbled with his zipper, the doubled texture of hot, hard flesh against the sensitive pads of her fingers and the teasing, burning touch stroking up the avid length of his firming cock nearly driving her mad. She was still on the outside of his mental wall, overlapping, not blended; somehow, not overwhelmed, but overwhelmingly _safe_.

Cassandra fought a hand between them again long enough to yank her panties _off_ , then reached up to capture his mouth again as he guided their bodies together: a rush like riding full speed on a Lawmaster, like storming through that building to Dredd's rescue with just herself and her Lawgiver, like the first sight of Dredd's face without his helmet, like choral music played at one-hundredth speed while her body turned to liquid flame. He groaned against her mouth, caught up in the same effect through the feedback of her touch; then collapsed against her as they both shattered, senses untangling again in the wash of endorphins that followed.

"Well," she said quietly a few minutes later. "I think that was a successful first experiment, don't you?"

"I should have asked if you had a shower first. And coffee," Dredd replied. His voice sounded disgruntled; but she could read him now, even without her currently overloaded, pleasure-bruised gifts, and felt every inch of the wary satisfaction written in the mostly-relaxed lines of his muscles and the wry curve of his jaw.

"I'm a psychic, not a heathen," she replied, laughing at him. "Shower first?"

Dredd looked down at her again, studying her with those surprisingly warm hazel eyes, then got back to his feet and held out his hand. "Yeah." Naked except for his socks, cock still half-hard against his thigh: and somehow still every inch the Law.

She took it, feeling suddenly fond, and let him pull her to her feet. "Yeah."


End file.
